Andreas Ludwig Priwin – now known to the world
as André Previn - was born in Berlin on 6 April 1929. He spent
his early years in the USA and specifically in California.

He is here caught during his second UK heyday.
The first one on the classical recording front was with the
LSO on the RCA label. The crop he made during the late 1960s
until the migration to EMI delivered enough recordings to provide
another set from the BMG coffers if only they could see the
case for it. It was with RCA that he launched his Rachmaninov
renaissance and in parallel - from 1967 onwards - brought out
a young man's RVW symphonies to vie with EMI's grand old
man, Boult. That said, the Previn RCA set holds up wonderfully
well, even now. In fact after the LSO years he made some even
better-sounding and equally sensitive RVW recordings with the
RPO and Telarc. They were recently reissued by that company
in a twofer.

In the UK Andre Previn was part of a media frenzy
from 1968 into the mid-1970s. He cut a glamorous and youthful
figure beside the ranks of stolid Brits. Here was this long-haired
young American with Broadway and Hollywood connections suddenly
heading the London Symphony Orchestra. What was happening? He
pulls out of the hat one of the best recordings ever of Walton's
First Symphony. RCA record the late romantics with him and the
LPs sell well. His Rachmaninov 2 (albeit cut) and 3 do better
than respectably. He takes a shine to RVW's symphonies and,
would you believe it, these are fresh and sensitive, eager and
spiritual readings, violent and vibrant too. He has his own
series on BBC TV with the LSO and even includes the Korngold
violin concerto and the RVW Tuba concerto. He appears on
BBCTV's Morecambe and Wise show bemused but still conducting
the LSO while Eric Morecambe makes a few feints at starting
the Grieg Piano Concerto. He has arrived! EMI Classics
take him up and he drops RCA. EMI do well by him. He delivers
hit after hit. All the Rach symphonies (No. 2 complete in a
starrily languorous reading which now seems a mite too self-indulgent
though still sells as one of the classics of the catalogue)
and the Rach piano concertos with Ashkenazy. He records Walton's
Belshazzar - a sonic spectacular with a jazzy tendency
which is meat and potatoes to Previn as also is his Lambert
Rio Grande. Soon there is also a celebrated Carmina
Burana. His Walton Second Symphony competes with Szell on
CBS and is vividly recorded even if Previn can do little to
make the work fly.

During his time with RCA Previn had recorded
all nine Vaughan Williams symphonies although unlike Boult he
did not venture much further. While Boult recorded Job,
Dona Nobis Pacem and Pilgrim's Progress and much
else, Previn steered clear of these. This transatlantic upstart
was seen as vying directly with the superficially starchy Boult.
Boult was given sumptuous sound by EMI but his imaginative reach
and sense of forward movement was beginning to fade.

The present set reflects a small sampling of
the many LPs he produced for EMI after he had migrated from
RCA. In those days this was a technically astute move as RCA
LPs of the early 1970s were sometimes of lesser sound quality.
EMI by contrast had technical and artistic staff of the highest
eminence. The elder company also correctly read the public interest
in this young and communicative conductor with a mane of long
hair, flares and flowery shirts. Here was an inspired communicator
with a touch of Bernstein and Stokowski about him. He made André
Previn's Music Night something of a television fixture for a
wider public than the usual stuffy classical crowd. The booklet
note by Andrew Stewart deals with this aspect as well as reminding
us of Previn’s compositional activities. These can be found
largely on DG - another box there, I wonder?

EMI have here provided a very economical way
of adding vintage Previn recordings to your collection. His
Turangalila was an early recording of the work, shaking
off the distant hegemony of the ancient Vega LP set but more
especially challenging the Ozawa version which had long held
sway on Previn’s old label, RCA. The playing is eruptively technicolour
and can stand comparison with much more modern versions. The
ondes martinot does perhaps sound a little literal like a dyspeptic
swanee whistle. Perhaps the bass is not quite as squat and extended
as you would get from a more modern digital effort such as from
Chung on DG or even from Rattle on a later EMI. Still the recording
is wonderfully enjoyable and the mystery and sensuality of Turangalila
are vividly put across.

There’s more French music on the second disc:
Debussy. This reproduces the first EMI digital recording including,
from those 1979 sessions, the Prélude and Images.
These performances are a blessed caress - a cool breeze. The
stereo soundstage is very believable and vivid. The velvet impact
of the romping strings in Fêtes, not to mention the commanding
brass and voluptuous upward slash of the harp within the first
minute of Fête says it all. Some Decca-style spotlighting
is going on here but the results are delicious.

CD 3 has another hallmark Previn recording: Rachmaninov
2. Hearing it again I am sure I have underestimated it having
previously been disparaging of what I saw as its rose-water
sentimentality. It is a plush analogue recording true enough
but it now seems heavily luxurious and in the case of the scherzo
propulsive and exciting. The analogue hiss is inescapable but
soon sinks from perception as the music engages. The recording
is a great one and has the regal advantage of having been made
not at Abbey Road but at the Kingsway Hall. Give me Cura,
Sanderling,
Rozhdestvensky
and Svetlanov
but this is still grand music-making. It's also significant
as the first recording of the complete score. Previn had recorded
it in the 1960s for RCA but it was in the cut version. Previn's
Bolero is not the quickest but it is idiomatic and is
spaciously recorded.

Previn and the LSO were often stunning in Russian
music as I have commented in reviewing his very fine The
Bells on EMI
Classics. That’s also true of this Shostakovich 8. The brass
benches in particular shone brightly for him, catching the coal
black quality of the Soviet brass if not quite their primeval
bray. Even so the strings sound gruntingly visceral in the third
movement. The earth ruptures and heaves catastrophically for
the Largo. The Allegretto finale combines the
grotesque and a sense of tragedy. For strong contrast we get
Prokofiev's Classical in a fast and etch-pointed performance.
It dances, sways and bubbles joyously. The Larghetto
is lovingly done – a dignified interpretation. The pinpoint
coordination and accuracy of the orchestra is a joy to hear.

CD 5 comprises a packed deep and generous selection
of 25 tracks from Previn and the LSO's complete Romeo and
Juliet. It's all very pointed and precise yet has not lost
that liberation of spirit that keeps such music life-enhancing.
The Dance with Mandolins has a peppery and jerky zaniness.
Juliet with Friar Laurence is all misty mystery and sweet
expectation. Propulsion is not in short supply for Tybalt
and Mercutio fight and the characters in the brass benches
make themselves felt in the most welcome way possible. Even
in the skeletally cantabile Death of Juliet the strings
hold their secure intonation and steadiness.

Previn's way with ballet music is confident and
well-judged. His three complete Tchaikovsky ballets are voluptuous
yet light on their toes. The sound for the six movements each
from Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty are matched
with ten movements from Nutcracker. I still enjoy Rozhdestvensky
and the BBCSO in their early 1980s LP recording - would that
that were easily available now. Svetlanov is also dependably
inspired in such music. This is however great stuff. The solo
moments are done with unfailing charm, élan and most of all
a sort of hushed magic to match the voluptuous grand tableaux.

CD 7 reminds us what a superb job Previn did
with Walton's
Belshazzar. Remember the original SAN LP series with
its gatefold sleeve. I was forcefully reminded of again of Walton's
astonishing brilliance recently when reviewing Kathryn Stott's
Dutton
CD of the Walton Sinfonia Concertante. It is heard
here in spades again in Belshazzar. John Shirley-Quirk,
caught at his meridian, is glorious. So are the massed London
Symphony Chorus – surely super-augmented for the occasion -
sounding like a great host. In this respect Ormandy's number-challenged
choir in his Sony version is well and truly bested. Otherwise
Ormandy produced a superb Belshazzar for Sony.
Previn’s brass are supreme and the cross-cutting brass groups
are magnificent in the paeans to the various pagan gods. In
fact Walton rather struck the reefs in making the invention
so bright-eyed for those unchristian gods that he struggled
to make the Hebrew slaves’ triumph sound as overwhelming as
it should. The London Symphony choir must have been coached
to within an inch of its life and one can almost feel Previn's
eyes holding the choir in a steely grip. The singing is eager,
alive with total concentration and bristling with spontaneity.
The Kingsway Hall has rarely sounded so magnificent. I had forgotten
how good this Belshazzar is: a triumph of the artists’
and recording team's art. Once again the craftsmanship is down
to EMI's technical aristocracy in the shape of the two Christophers:
Bishop and Parker. This Previn Belshazzar defines exuberance.
No wonder someone thought of the same forces for Orff's Carmina
Burana. In this work Walton slashed the temple curtain on
the Victorian choral tradition once and for all. It's one of
those recordings where you expect a burst of applause. There
is none but you can ‘hear’ it in your head.

After Belshazzar we get a dignified, virile
and clear Enigma and a serene and caressing Greensleeves
as an echo of Previn’s RCA recordings of the complete RVW symphonies.
The latter is from 1971 and the former from 1978.

Previn's 1973 Planets was an audio byword.
It sold and sold in a world crammed with good Planets including
my favoured George Hurst on a Contour LP awaiting CD revival
and a Handley reading reissued on Regis.
Previn's is a ripe and fantastical Planets. Listen to
that crump of the drums and brass at the very start of Jupiter.

Previn's glass and silver-etched Grimes interludes
and Passacaglia were also ikons of the analogue catalogue
and with astutely ineluctable reasoning too. Their power is
undimmed. Do try the fine passacaglia. It always had a symphonic
momentum and weight yet I wonder how many people went on to
play it after the four interludes were over. The original Britten
coupling was the Sinfonia da Requiem; that too was sensational.

And so to disc 9 where Previn and his forces
trooped back to the Kingsway Hall for Carmina Burana to
capture that violet lush and lavishly detailed sound. The choruses
have been coached to a precise T by a composer whose music we
hear nothing of now. Arthur Oldham wrote much including Chinese
Lyrics and Psalms in Time of War. The boys’ choir
was trained by Audrey Clifford. It's a bigger sound than Kegel,
Smetacek (Supraphon) and, before that, Jochum
secured but the performance romps with life and seductive sensuous
juice. A good track to sample for the magnificence of brass
and choral tone is Were du werlt alle min. Whatever you
may think of Carmina Burana and its two Trionfi companions
it has visceral power - rhythm over melody. It is a great passage
of arms and unfailingly brings the house down. The nasal rasp
in the men's voices is a joy to hear. The bass drum and the
tuba groan in In taberna – glorious! The choirs are fully
equal to – in fact trounce – the tongue-twisting challenges
of this score.

After this great blast of rhythmic power we move
to the dignified address of Barber's Adagio and look
back to Previn’s America and indeed to at least one of Previn's
music night concerts on the BBCTV. The Barber is tender and
probing, poignant and exploratory, feeling its way towards the
apex of emotional surging expression at 6:33. it then curves
down into meditation – a transatlantic Tallis.

The final disc is all Gershwin. The recordings
are from 1971 but topped up to make 76:01 with the 1980 recording
of the Cuban Overture. Previn like Bernstein is here
both pianist and conductor. The LSO ape the manner and sound
of an American orchestra letting its hair down. Gervase de Peyer
is the slinky oily upwards-striking clarinet in Rhapsody
in Blue. The rest is similarly idiomatic though now find
a little of these works goes a long way.

In short this set, which comes in a clamshell
cardboard case and individual sleeves for each disc, brilliantly
represents the always sincere Previn. The recordings have come
up as fresh as proverbial paint.

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